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ECGenie on Inauguration Day: Crowd Size, and Alternative Facts

Researchers across America, and across the world, have historically been very interested in recording the ECG of awake laboratory animals, to query how genes, diseases, and drugs might affect or improve human hearts and health.

There is growing awareness that the ECG of a conscious laboratory mouse, replete with active autonomic nervous system modulation, is more informative and translatable to human health than the ECG from an anesthetized subject. Proponents of telemetry will advocate that ECG in awake lab animals requires surgically implanted ECG transmitters, and misleadingly claim there is no alternative. Facts are abundant, however, reflected through numerous scientific publications, that the ECGenie provides comparable ECG data, in larger numbers of animals, more humanely, at far less cost, and at a much faster speed. These facts and features are hugely beneficial to pre-clinical studies.

We non-invasively recorded the ECG in 3 awake mice with the ECGenie during President Trump’s ~16 minute inaugural address . The instrumentation is shown in Figure 1; representative data from the brief ECG recordings are shown in the right panel.

Table 1 reports ECG metrics from the 3 awake mice studied.

Figure 2 shows the mouse cage before his acceptance speech [left panel], and after President Trump’s address [right panel]. It is clear by comparing the 2 images that all of the mice were just as happy and healthy before the ECGenie recordings as they were after.

The ECGenie provides an alternative method for monitoring live laboratory animals to understand their cardiovascular system as researchers across the world strive to improve animal and human health and well being.